For many politicians, dripping into conversations concerning children’s “mental health and wellbeing” is a way of showing themselves to be “on message”.
The phrase has taken over from “social mobility” and before that “equity and equality”. These terms are important, but the suspicion remains that many know the words but not the tune.
The re-introduction of face masks for children was an example of this. The policy to protect physical health was diluted by a nod to “worries” about the impact on mental health, all deflecting from the real issues facing schools – namely the challenges enforcing such a policy.
In our new book – About Our Schools: Improving on previous best (2022) – we analyse interviews with people from across the world of schooling: 14 former secretaries of state, including the unfortunate Gavin Williamson, together with interviews with more than 90 others, including such influential figures as heads of Ofsted and CEOs of MATs as well, of course, as teachers and heads of schools.
One of the things we explore is the way that political policies, too often, are easier said than done – and often contradict each other.
That leads to practices in schools which grow in response to one “message” but counter to another. Where now schools need to show concern for mental health and wellbeing, just a few years ago “character, grit and resilience” were all the rage. Of course, these are not opposites: mental health is bolstered by resilience.
Too often though, politics moves onto new words without necessarily exploring their meanings.
About Our Schools: Also from Mick Waters & Tim Brighouse in this series:
- Why are we here? Twelve reasons schools exist (January 2022)
- Accountability: Let’s stop this madness and incentivise the right things (February, 2022).
Mental health and wellbeing
So, let’s look beyond the face mask at children’s – and teachers’ – mental health and wellbeing and some of the ways they might be affected.
How about the impact of a curriculum and qualification outlook that puts art, dance, drama and music on the periphery of the learning experience for most pupils in the slog to secure GCSEs that satisfy the accountability regime?
What about long-term mental health in a nation where we condemn a proportion to failure at aged 16 using a norm-referenced and algorithm-driven exam system. Some have the resilience to keep their GCSE results in proportion but many never recover.
What most teachers want to do is communicate the joy and intrigue of their subject disciplines but find themselves restrained by an overloaded and frantic exam specification. Children see through the masks of their teachers as they try to justify the benefits of obscure irrelevant content.
The accountability regime
Of course, driving the exam fetish is the accountability regime. If we are serious about mental health, then a review of the over-bearing accountability regime is long overdue. The consequences are so great that the stress of impending inspection permeates a school, often for years. This is not just those schools under the cosh of previous poor inspection judgements, but the tension also rises in those schools previously judged to be the pick of the crop. The pressure not to lose the status grows for adults, with children aware of their school on tenterhooks. Is that good for wellbeing?
In our book, we argue that the gradually centralising control of government has led to school leaders being expected to act as branch managers, carrying forward corporate policy, with teachers as operatives – each treated in a less than professional way.
Standardised approaches to aspects of school life fail to respect individuals or communities. An increasingly centralised system of professional development promotes an assumed orthodoxy by promoting templates and models.
So, approaches to lessons become formulaic and we risk cloning our teachers and leaders though our standardised lesson observations and frameworks for inspection. Much of this is driven by the Ofsted orthodoxy that spreads as a result of reports that begin to define, through example, what inspectors are expecting to see.
Behaviour
One area where mental health and wellbeing become live for staff and pupils is behaviour. Most behaviour in schools is good (and incomparably good with 40 years ago, mostly due to the increased numbers of adults in schools).
However, those schools and teachers that experience difficulties are often those with most stringent policies with sanctions and rewards clearly specified.
In our book, Tom Bennet, the government’s behaviour advisor, (maybe he should be giving advice to government about its own behaviour) was critical of the way many schools’ policies create rather than reduce problems.
He did, though, contradict himself by on the one hand saying schools should mirror the real world in their managing of environments (citing airports, service stations and shopping centres) while on the other hand supporting the use of “behaviour ladders” (which ought really to be called misbehaviour ladders). We don’t see many inclusion rooms in service stations (except maybe for smokers).
There are significant wellbeing issues associated with children being on a one-way route up a behaviour ladder leading inexorably towards exclusion. What does it do to a child’s mental health to be placed in an isolation cubicle? The assertion that being faced with three sheets of plain plywood will improve concentration and relationships with others are hardly borne-out by annual fixed term exclusion rates.
What are the repercussions in terms of mental health on the 7,894 pupils permanently excluded in an average school year (according to the official DfE statistics for 2018/19)? Or for the pupils who lose 438,265 days to fixed term exclusions for a year, enough to fill three average-sized secondary schools? (DfE, 2020).
Seeing the students as problems
A significant proportion of children excluded had their first problems in schools over very trivial issues, but the ladder and the managerial processes escalated them as problems (rather than their behaviour), unless that is they were fortunate to meet one of those teachers who knew the importance of getting to know them and had the time to make a human connection.
Too often those early problems are about appearance. While we are worrying about children’s feelings about how they look in a surgical mask, let’s think about children being asked to wear a uniform for seven years that does not suit their hair colour or complexion. Or think how they must feel to spend each school day surrounded by up to 1,000 others dressed in a sombre black, or travel to school in a different colour from the tribe around them.
If we are really concerned about mental health and wellbeing, we might look at the school day itself: days lived a breakneck speed, snatched lunch breaks with little time to relax. A day that begins with a bus journey for many well before daylight so that the school can “deliver” two lessons prior to them really waking up. Covid has of course affected daily routine but, as it subsides, we have chance to refresh.
What to do?
Our book is optimistic. It anticipates the dawning of a new age in schools: one of hope, ambition and collaborative partnerships. We offer suggestions for consideration including an investment in speech and language development for young children which would, in time, make a significant difference in secondary schools. We also believe a major consideration of SEND provision is well overdue.
And we do think that the accountability regime should incentivise the right things and the exam system should be reformed along with a curriculum that balances academic and practical pursuit.
We suggest programmes to engage all children and extend their talents wherever they may lie. We also believe that funding needs to be directed towards those schools that work with families and communities that do not see schooling as being for them and that recognition for the work they do needs to be fulsome.
When we do these sorts of things, our school system will be a lot more at ease with itself. Our politicians are now talking about mental health and wellbeing: let’s take the conversation beyond the superficial.
- A former headteacher, Professor Mick Waters has worked in teacher education and at policy levels in both local and national government. He was director of curriculum at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority from 2005 to 2009. Sir Tim Brighouse was twice a chief education officer – once in Oxfordshire and once in Birmingham – and led the London Challenge.
Further information & resources
- Brighouse & Waters: About Our Schools: Improving on previous best, Crown House Publishing, January 2022 (available now): www.crownhouse.co.uk/about-our-schools
- DfE: Academic Year 2018/19: Permanent exclusions and suspensions in England, July 2020: https://bit.ly/3KZl5WS